Futuristic Australian Train Could Transport Citizens at High Speed with Low Emissions

A new train designed by the HASSEL could one day be zipping people around Australia while reducing the country’s carbon output. The A-HSV train is a double decker machine that promises to have just 4 kg of CO2 emissions per 100 passengers per kilometer — compared to 14 kg for a car, or 17 for a plane carrying the same number of people the same distance. The train was apparently inspired by the 1960’s version of the Holden Monaro coupe and it promises to transport its future passengers in style. Watch a video of it in motion after the jump!

The A-HSV train by HASSELL promises to be a luxurious ride for anyone that hops aboard. There is a communal seating area for passengers, private rooms to hold meetings in, a dining area and a convenience store. HASSELL sees the train shuttling commuters quickly between urban areas, and from populous centers to the countryside.

The design firm believes that the train is the ideal way to eliminate a large portion of Australia’s emissions by offering commuters and travelers a low-cost, efficient and leisurely option that could replace air and car travel. The new rail system could also offer a way to decentralize Australia’s dense population centers by allowing efficient travel from suburban homes to urban work places. With its new vision for commuter seating areas, low emissions and sleek design, if the A-HSV were an option for us, we’d hop on in a second.

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3 Comments

lazyreaderJune 8, 2011 at 2:04 pm

Where will the train go? The problem with high speed rail is that it doesn’t start where you are and really doesn’t always go where you want it to go let alone at a given time exactly when you need it. And I’m talking about light-rail, streetcars, heavy rail, subways, or commuter rail too. In California, despite an originally high hopes regarding an HSR line through the state. But the likelihood of that happening in a State that’s broke is sparse. Florida’s governor had the smarts to reject HSR funds. Rail transit is obsolete. Rail freight makes a lot of sense, especially in Australia where you don’t have to go far since most of the cities are on the Eastern edge of the Continent. I love trains, I especially like those Art Deco trains from the 20;s and 30;s and visited the B&O railroad museum and the stations and took Baltimore’s light rail once or twice. However I have to admit……….financially it’s obsolete. It makes no sense to spend billions of dollars on a system that may only serve a few thousand people a day. Fares do not even cover the cost of construction, even if they do there are still capital costs for annual operation. We’ve spent nearly 100 billion dollars on various rail transit projects in America in the last 30 years and they carry overall less than a few percent of all commuters in those cities. Some of those States are spending almost half their transportation budget on rail and it barely carries a few thousand people a day. It’s never gonna carry much more than that even if they built a dozen more lines in their respective city. They’ve done research by various institutes, and rail system do not necessarily stimulate economic development, it simply redirects it from one place to the other. Australia and America are a lot alike. They both have rapidly decentralized in population since the Post-war years. They both are viewed as significant carbon emitters and both have significant environmental lobbying efforts. Still it does not make any sense to spend billions on a city-to-city rail system that overall is less convenient than driving and slower than flying. If Aussies want to get from city to city, there’s a thing called the bus. No one talks about the bus. Anything you can do with extensive rail systems, you can do cheaper and just as easily with buses. There cheap (at least less than 2 percent the start up costs) to start up and cheap to run. To date, no Australian high speed rail proposal has progressed past the planning stage. The long distances and difficult terrain between major population centres, low population density of the intervening regions, and present affordability of air travel make it difficult for such proposals to demonstrate financial viability. The idea of HSR in Australia is their competitiveness is expected to increase with future population increases, particularly that in regional areas, but that’s unlikely even if the countries population doubles. According to Infrastructure Australia, high speed rail links may cost the taxpayers as much as 30-60 billion dollars. Another study concluded that the total cost of a high-speed rail link from Melbourne to the Sunshine Coast would be 80 billion.

I wonder if that train is actually fair dinkum… Aussies call sources of trouble “Hassles” and a very popular local car manufacturer produces HSV’s (Holden Special Vehicles).

That being said, the capacity of the train needs to be matched with significant speeds – apparently constructing the necessary infrastructure to support high-speed rail (aka bullet trains etc) is the nail in the coffin for similar proposals in Australia in the past.

But that’s not to say I wouldn’t like a ride in a Monaro train!!

kloudonJune 6, 2011 at 5:27 pm

Cool, I especially love the seating layout. However, the train is really empty! I am sure they calculated 4 kg of CO2 for a much fuller train (if not a crush load.)